


i won't let you in, i swore never again

by Zannolin



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Claustrophobia, Flashbacks, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, no beta we die like sleepytwt every time phil tweets, philza minecraft is a bad dad (in canon), references to exile basically, you can all blame virgil for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29619315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zannolin/pseuds/Zannolin
Summary: Tommy doesn’t have a voice anymore, but he keeps on screaming.No one comes.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 395
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	i won't let you in, i swore never again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cacowhistle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacowhistle/gifts).



> uh....two uploads in one day? pog? basically today's stream (2/21) both clubbed me upside the head and gave me a lot of inspiration and thanks to virgil encouraging me I speedran this whole thing and I am so fucking sorry wow this is sad.
> 
> if you need something to help you cope after this angst fest (be sure to read the tags btw) feel free to go check out my [fixit series.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064078) we have plenty of hurt/comfort over there.

Tommy is sitting in a corner. It’s very small, both because the room itself is small, and because he’s pressed himself as tightly into the corner as he can possibly go.

(He doesn’t like that. It makes him sweat, makes his skin crawl and itch and burn, make his breath heave in trembling gasps, which he does his very best to stifle, because _Dream might hear them, Dream doesn’t like him showing signs of weakness, Dream will look at him in disappointment and Tommy can’t handle that—_ )

Tommy bites his tongue. _Hard._

It hurts like a bitch, but it grounds him a little. Steadies him better than his fingers, shaking and raw from silently clawing at the glassy surface of the obsidian walls and floor. He knows there’s no way he could possibly mine his way out of here with only his hands, but his panic had overridden his common sense at one point, probably around the sixth hour of Dream trying to talk to him, offer him potatoes, reminisce about _fucking exile._

Tommy had screamed and shouted until his throat ached and burned, and then he had screamed some more.

He can’t make a sound now, can only press his shoulder against the walls of the cell until it _aches,_ lean his head against the warm stone and try to ignore the pain in his throat and his hands and his panic-constricted chest as he gulps down air, whistling and rasping in his nose and windpipe.

Over his rattling breaths, he can hear Dream scribbling in one of his remaining books, seated contentedly at his lectern. Tommy wishes he’d burned them all.

The corner is small, and Tommy is not small enough to hide himself any further in it, and as he curls in on himself, listening to the slow roil and hiss of the lava, the steady dripping of the crying obsidian above and around him, he tries his best to block the memories that bubble up inside him.

( _Hiding in an empty crate in Techno’s house, feeling the cold from the open door seeping through the slats. The crackle and pop of Techno’s brewing stands, nearly drowned out by Dream’s heavy footfalls, his sly voice crawling out from behind his mask and curling into Tommy’s ears, creeping into his blood, tightening around his throat until he couldn’t_ breathe.)

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. A droplet falls, tapping his head.

( _The clatter of cobblestone, the pouring of sand. Wilbur’s laugh ringing out and echoing weirdly against the narrow walls of Pogtopia. The jeers from him and Techno and Tubbo._

_“Now he can’t **breathe** ,” Tubbo had snickered, and it was true. Tommy had clawed at the piston, the cobble, nose full of the burning stench of redstone, heaving shallow gasps of air, spitting sand from his mouth for hours — minutes? days? — until he was freed._

_The worst part wasn’t that Wilbur had been deranged and cruel, teetering on the brink of insanity. No, the worst part was that his laugh had sounded perfectly normal._ )

Tommy stifles a sob and tries to make himself smaller.

Dream’s pen scratches on.

* * *

(In the beginning he’d been yelling for help, screaming for Sam, and then — embarrassingly — _Phil._

Phil, who has never been there for him. Phil, who has never shown anything but disappointment and dismissal to him, despite all Tommy’s efforts. Phil, who blew up L’manberg.

Phil, who killed Wilbur.

Phil, Tommy knows, has only ever hurt him, or just not given a shit, who could say. But despite it all, he still can’t make himself stop seeking his approval, his smiles, some modicum of affirmation, because this was Wilbur’s father. Maybe some part of Tommy wishes Phil could have been his father, too.

Maybe then he would have cared more.

Maybe he would have _helped._ )

* * *

The TNT hasn’t gone off for hours now — days? How long has it been? There’s no clock anymore — but still Tommy can hear it ringing in his ears, can practically taste the gunpowder, feel the ground shaking under his feet as L’manberg is ripped to shreds, once, twice, thrice —

But he’s not _in_ L’manberg. He _knows_ that. L’manberg is gone, and he’s still here.

L’manberg is gone, and Wilbur is gone, and Tommy is locked in the prison with Dream.

(Dream, the reason behind every time L’manberg was blown up.)

The memories jumble together in his head, the warmth of the lava curtain morphing into the sticky August heat, smooth obsidian walls so painfully similar to the blackstone of Eret’s Final Control Room. The hiss of the lava sounds too much like a lit fuse.

Tommy feels like a lit fuse, sometimes. Sparking and burning and being eaten away until there’s nothing left but destruction and desolation.

Was the echo of explosions the last thing Wilbur heard before he died? Or did Phil say something to him when he plunged the sword into his son’s chest, took away one of the few things Tommy had left?

He knows he’s imagining it, but he smells gunpowder and smoke and terror.

Tommy bites down, and he tastes blood.

* * *

(He curls his aching fingers against glassy obsidian and thinks of a broken Nether portal, thinks of _put your things in the hole, Tommy,_ thinks of TNT hissing in the rain, in the sun, time and time again.

 _It’s time for you to start over, Tommy,_ Dream had said.

Why is it every time Tommy tries to make something, tries to _be_ something, it gets taken away?)

* * *

Tommy hates the lava curtain. He _hates_ it. Logically he knows, if he really wanted to, he could jump in, swim for a moment in that glowing orange abyss, and respawn. It would hurt, but it would get him _out_ of this cell. It would get him away from Dream.

But here’s the thing about lava.

(Here’s the thing about _lives._ )

Tommy can’t look at it, can’t _think_ about it, without his mind catapulting him back to that first horrific day of exile, when he walked right up to the edge of the netherrack and stared down into a simmering lake of fire and wondered if Icarus wouldn’t be a more fitting name for someone like him.

Fuck Techno and his _Theseus_ bullshit, right?

(Even now no one is quite sure about their limit on respawns. The idea of three “lives” is commonly accepted, and no one is without a lump of fear in their throats when they respawn, that tingling moment of panic when they wonder _is this it for me? Was that one of them? Am I one step closer to death?_

Techno used to say it was all in a person’s head, whether they lost a life or not, and Tommy has a creeping suspicion that if he were to jump into that lava, he might never come out.)

* * *

(The embarrassing thing is, he hadn’t meant to yell for Phil, not really. That was the name that slipped out when Tommy caught himself, corrected to a different person. Someone who, though unlikely, was still _technically_ within the realm of possibility when it came to someone trying to rescue him.

At first, he’d tried to call for Wilbur.)

* * *

The corner is small, and the obsidian mocks him, and the lava heats his cheeks until his skin feels painfully stretched and dry. Tommy can’t bring himself to sob, though his fingers ache and his head pounds and he wants to be anywhere, _anywhere_ but here.

He misses Sam Nook and the hotel. He misses Tubbo and Snowchester, Techno and his secluded arctic base. He misses the echoing corridors of Pogtopia, the comforting familiarity of his home’s dirt walls. He misses L’manberg, and Niki’s bakery, and the Camarvan.

(He misses Wilbur.)

 _Just you and me, in here, for a week._ Dream had sounded far too cheerful. _We can bond._

Fuck bonding. Fuck Dream.

 _I want to go home,_ he had said. _I was ready to be done._

(He ought to know by now that he’s never _done,_ never _free._ What was it Dream had said? _L’manberg can be independent, but L’manberg can never be free._

Or maybe, _it’s not your time to die._

It’s never Tommy’s time — to die, or to rest, or to be done with the pain and the strife and the war on this stupid fucking server. He never gets to be free, does he?)

* * *

Tommy doesn’t have a voice anymore, but he keeps on screaming.

No one comes.

**Author's Note:**

> Find my perpetually angsty ass on [tumblr](https://zannolin.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/zannolin), and various other sites (same @)! I'm most active on twitter, currently crying over the block men 24/7.


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